Music is the art of organizing sounds to make them express a message, an impression, a
state of heart, an atmosphere, an emotion, feelings It
is a communication which emanates from the composer or
performer and goes to the auditor.

Music is primarily transmitted by sound.
All sound characteristics can thus be exploited to enrich
musical communication.

Sound is an air vibration perceived by the
ear. When the pianist hits a piano key, the movement creates
a shock between a small hammer and a metallic string. This
string vibrates and resounds in the piano. While doing so, it
carries the air with it and this vibration of the air
propagates all around. When this vibration reaches your ear,
you get the sound feeling that you know.

The propagation of the sound is similar to
the undulations that you see on the surface of a calm water
when you throw a stone in it.

A sound vibration has various
characteristics we can perceive. The first characteristic is
the sound pitch. On a physical
viewpoint, it is the number of vibrations executed by the air
in one second. The more vibrations there is, the more the
sound appears high-pitched to you. Schematically, you can
compare a low-pitched sound and a high-pitched sound in the following way:

Low-pitched sound:

High-pitched sound:

The second characteristic is the amplitude (loudness) or the force of the sound. The larger
the vibration, the more a sound appears loud to you. Here is
an illustration:

Weak sound:

Loud sound :

A third characteristic of the sound is its duration. For how long does the air vibrate? This duration
is measured in seconds.

The last characteristic is the timbre of the sound. It lets you distinguish the type of
instrument playing. You can easily distinguish a melody played by a piano from a melody played by a flute.
Even if the melody is the same in both cases, you can at once
recognize the piano or the flute. Physically, this difference
comes from the shape of the vibration. For example, here are
two sounds having the same pitch and the same force but they
are characterized by the timbre, i.e. the shape of the
vibration:

When you will have learned how to open a
document with Pizzicato, we will listen to examples of these
four sound characteristics: pitch, duration, amplitude and
timbre.

Music being a sound, the most obvious way
to transmit it is to listen to it. It is indeed the most
satisfactory manner to communicate music.

The most direct communication would imply
the simultaneous presence of the performer and the auditor,
like in a concert. The atmosphere in a concert cannot indeed
be compared with listening to a disc or radio transmission.
There is in this case something more than simply the sound.

Techniques currently available make it
possible to collect sounds and to store them in various forms
like discs, cassettes and CDs. The advantage is to be able to
reproduce the music at will, to distribute it and communicate
it on a large scale. These techniques transmit the final
sound result of the execution of a piece of music.

When you want to transmit a musical work to
somebody so that he can perceive the musical message and
appreciate its beauty, a cassette or a disc will be adequate.
If you want to communicate to him the contents of a musical
work so that he can play it himself, the sound support only
is not very practical and becomes insufficient in most cases.
If it is possible for a well trained person to listen to a
melody and play it back by memory, this ability is not
general and remains limited to relatively simple cases. It
becomes very difficult to realize as soon as the work becomes
a little complicated and when you think of a one hour piano
concerto with orchestra, it becomes almost impossible.

Music
notation offers a more practical
solution to transmit music to somebody so that he can himself
play it. Its purpose is to be able to represent the contents
of a musical work in a written form. In this manner, you can
communicate in a precise way anything that occurs during the
execution of a piece of music.

This musical notation language evolved
throughout history up to the present day. The modern system
such as it currently exists is largely recognized on the
international level and forms a universal language understood
by most musicians worldwide. An immense repertoire is
available in this form in musical bookshops. Learning this
language thus opens communication with most of past and
present musical works. It also lets you write your music so
that others can play it. This music course will guide you and
help you discover the main points of this musical notation
language.

Conventionally, music is
written on a support made up of 5 horizontal lines. It is the
staff. The lines are traced at equal distances one from
the other. The exact distance is not fixed and can vary from
one score to another. It must be of a size adequate to the
readability of the score. Here is an example:

The staff lines are numbered from 1 to 5
starting from the bottom line:

The space located between 2 lines is called
space between lines. The four line spacing are also numbered upwards:

Each sound is written on the staff in the
form of a note. A note is a round
symbol placed either on a line or in a line spacing:

The note can be filled (coloured in black)
or empty, as in the above example.

Each characteristic of the sound is written
on the staff.

The pitch of the sound (high or low) is
represented by the vertical position of the note on the
staff. An high pitch note will be written higher on the staff
than a low note:

The duration of the sounds is graphically represented by the
shape of the note. Here are the main shapes available:

The written shape of the note
is called the rhythm or the rhythmic
value of the note. In the above example, the first rhythm
represents a long duration. The next one lasts twice less
than the first, and so on for the next ones. We will explain
this further with examples. For the moment, the point is to
show you how each characteristic of the sound is represented
on the staff.

An important aspect of musical notation is
the exact time sequence of notes. When will the performer
play such and such note? When several performers play
together, they must be able to start and play while staying
synchronized one with each other.

To this end, the staff is divided into
several areas called measures. They are
separated one from the other by a vertical bar on the full
height of the staff. These vertical bars are called measures
bars. Here is an example of a staff
with 3 measures:

In this way, the total duration of a piece
of music is divided into smaller durations. A musical work
thus consists of a specific number of measures played one
after the other. Each measure can contain notes with rhythmic
values.

The timbre of the sound depends obviously
of the instrument playing the notes. Each instrument has a specific timbre. It is its sound colour. The
name of the instrument is often written in front of the first
measure of the staff:

When several instruments play together, a
staff is allocated for each instrument. The notes played by
an instrument are placed in the staff of this instrument. The
staves are then displayed one below the other. To show that
these staves must be played together, a vertical bar connects
them all on the left of the staff, and also at each barline
when the instruments concerned belong to the same group (e.g.
several trumpets). Here is an example of 3 staves played
together:

This example contains 3 measures. When a
piece of music contains for example 250 measures, it will be
impossible to place them one next to the other (you would
need a 100 meters width score). When you write a letter and
you come to the border of the paper, you continue writing
lower, starting again from the left border of the paper. When
the page is full, you simply continue on another page. It is
exactly the same for music notation. Here is an example of a
score which contains 7 measures played by 2 different
instruments:

This example requires two remarks. First,
when the staves are connected (and thus played at the same
time), the staves barlines are placed at the same horizontal
distance. Those barlines are sometimes connected together:

The second remark is that the width of
measures can vary. It depends on the contents of each
measure. The width of the measure is adapted so that the
contents are laid out in a readable way.

The last characteristic of the sound is the
amplitude or its loudness. By hitting the keys softly or
strongly, a pianist produces notes of various amplitudes.
This aspect of playing is showed on the score by using
symbols placed above or below the staff. Here are 3 examples:

The first symbol (P) shows that the notes
must be played gently from there on. The second symbol (>)
represents an accent, which means that the note must be
played more loudly, but only that one. The third (F)
indicates that it is necessary to play loudly from there on.
We will further reconsider the exact significance of symbols than can be found in a score.

The notes are placed on the staff. Their
graphic shape and their position indicate the duration and
the pitch of the sound. When several instruments play
together, several staves are displayed one below the other
and are connected by a vertical line on the left side. A
musical work is made up of a succession of measures played
one after the other. These measures are separated by vertical
barlines in the staves. The notes played by an instrument are
placed on the staff of this instrument. Various symbols can
be added in the score to indicate how the notes must be
played.